When a night out involves the risk of getting ‘spiked’, it’s male violence that’s the problem
A young woman, out for a night’s clubbing, suddenly feels the room begin to spin.
She blacks out and wakes up feeling terrible, with only vague memories of the night before and a mysterious throbbing pain in the back of her hand. And then, on closer inspection, she finds a pinprick in the skin. She thinks she remembers a sharp scratch, like an injection, before everything went blank.
It sounds like the stuff of urban myth, the kind of gap-year horror story that starts in a remote backstreet bar in South America and ends in the victim supposedly waking up missing a kidney. Yet reports of so-called “spiking by needle” – young women on a night out allegedly being injected by unseen strangers with something that knocks them out – are being taken seriously by police in cities including Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Heartbreakingly, there have been reports of nervous women going out in thick, needle-proof jeans and leather jackets. However rare these incidents may turn out to be, they fit a pattern of behaviour that for many feels horribly familiar.
Once upon a time, the idea of spiking drinks – slipping drugs or extra shots of alcohol into a glass while the victim’s back was turned, rendering them vulnerable to a would-be rapist or thief – seemed outlandish too. But a BBC investigation in 2019 uncovered 2,600 reports of drink-spiking to police in England and Wales over the previous four years, and now the return of nightlife post-lockdown seems to be bringing old fears out of the woodwork.
Nottinghamshire police have recorded 44 reported spiking incidents since September, 12 of them involving “something sharp’’. Student unions nationwide are collecting accounts of suspected drink-tampering, with reported incidents in Sheffield, Norwich, and Canterbury. After enduring months of cancelled music festivals and shuttered bars, this year’s freshers deserve to be out having the time of their lives. But for some, socialising is now edged with anxiety.
A stranger’s hand unceremoniously shoved up your skirt on a night out has become almost routine for young women. Street harassment – not just catcalling but crude propositioning and being followed by men who may get aggressive if rejected – is normalised. Young women are sick of being told to stick together, or to watch their drinks, when the problem is male violence, not female vigilance. Why should they tie themselves in ever more anxious knots trying to stay safe, while the perpetrators carry on regardless? What depresses many older women, meanwhile, is that, if anything, this kind of everyday harassment seems to have got worse – creepier and more aggressive – over the years, even as the world opens up for younger women in so many ways. …
